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Tourism Planning & Development

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Material Pacification: How a Conflict Over PavingUganda’s Tourism Road Got Accidentally Resolved

Christine Ampumuza, Martijn Duineveld & René van der Duim

To cite this article: Christine Ampumuza, Martijn Duineveld & René van der Duim (2021): MaterialPacification: How a Conflict Over Paving Uganda’s Tourism Road Got Accidentally Resolved,Tourism Planning & Development, DOI: 10.1080/21568316.2021.1988693

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2021.1988693

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Material Pacification: How a Conflict Over Paving Uganda’sTourism Road Got Accidentally ResolvedChristine Ampumuza, Martijn Duineveld and René van der Duim

Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, TheNetherlands

ABSTRACTStarting from an Actor-network Theory (ANT) inspired relationalperspective on object formation and material agency, this articleanalyses the controversies about plans to pave the Ruhija roadthrough Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Uganda). Based oninterviews, ethnographic observations, and analysis of relevantdocuments, we examine the multiple ways in which the Ruhijaroad is enacted and objectified in conservation, tourism, andplanning practices. We further show how these differentobjectifications of the Ruhija road not only led to enduringconflicts but also contributed to postponing the plans to pave theroad. We argue that improving traction of the road pacified theconflicts. The partial solidification of the muddiest parts of theroad unintentionally matched with the different “road realities” ofthe actors involved. Our analysis shows how the vibrancy ofmateriality is always relational, and can only be understood bytaking into account the context of their objectification.

KEYWORDSMaterial agency; planningand policy; Ruhija road;Bwindi; material pacification

Introduction

Infrastructure such as roads are an important aspect in tourism planning and policy pro-cesses. Over the years a significant body of literature has emerged focusing on forexample developing the most appropriate planning models (Getz, 1986), increasing com-munity participation in tourism planning and policy-making processes (Bello et al., 2016;Murphy, 2012; Simmons, 1994), and sustainability in tourism infrastructure planning(Boers & Cottrell, 2007; Patwal, 2013). In these studies roads are portrayed as objectsthat facilitate mobility of tourists, connect places, and spur development of tourist desti-nations (Cárdenas-García & Sánchez-Rivero, 2015; Jovanovic & Ivana, 2016; Khadaroo &Seetanah, 2007). In addition, Kanwal et al. (2020) explain how constructing roads canmotivate communities to support tourism development projects.

Within this body of literature, it is argued that roads and other infrastructures haveimportant utility functions. They open up and connect places, and they enable avariety of mobilities. However, Lund and Jóhannesson (2014, p. 456) show that roadscan also disconnect places and enact tourist destinations in multiple ways: “the road is

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

CONTACT Christine Ampumuza champumuza@kab.ac.ug, ampumrest@gmail.com

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENThttps://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2021.1988693

not only a passive construction that fixes traffic through the region, but also it has creativecapacities”. The creative capacities of roads have also been extensively explored byanthropologists to understand the dynamics of societies (Harvey, 2012). These studiesexplain that roads are rich with material and social relations conflating the material,social, local, global, politics, economics, subsistence, capitalism, and daily mundane prac-tices (Dalakoglou & Harvey, 2012). In this view, roads emerge as entities that generate par-ticular worlds, and while doing so, they make, and break particular relations.

Following this literature, this article analyses the Ruhija road in Uganda as an objectthat is enacted in multiple practices (Mol, 2002). In addition, we also draw from discus-sions on material agency that have emerged in the last 15 years in various disciplineslike archaeology (Joyce, 2012; Meskell, 2008), sociology (Pinch & Swedberg, 2008), politicalscience (Bennett et al., 2010; Coole & Frost, 2010), organisation studies (Carlile et al., 2013),and extensively in studies on landscapes, spaces and places (Anderson & Wylie, 2009;Barba Lata & Minca, 2018; Bennett, 2010; Duineveld et al., 2017) and tourism studies. Inthe latter, it has been argued that materiality such as cheese (Ren, 2011), cigars(Simoni, 2012), coral reefs (Middelveld et al., 2016) are central to the enactment oftourist destinations. Yet that is not all. Materialities can also disrupt tourist activitiesand schedules as illustrated by particles from a volcanic eruption in Iceland which tempor-ary halted air travel in most parts of Europe (Van der Duim et al., 2013).

This article contributes to this body of literature by analysing the role material agencyin both the shaping and the expiration of the controversy around the paving of the Ruhijaroad in Bwindi (Uganda). The Ruhija road is an unpaved winding road running from eastto west through Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Bwindi), a forest of 321 square kilo-metres, located in south-western Uganda bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo tothe west (see Map 1).

Currently, the park is renowned for mountain gorilla conservation and gorilla tourism(van der Duim et al., 2014). The Ruhija road was opened up in 1957, before Bwindi forestwas declared a national park, following demands for road access from local communities,and to facilitate the gold and timber trade (Ogaram et al., 1995).

Over the years the Ruhija road featured prominently in (social) media, policy reportsand public discussions. The road has always received most media attention during therainy season when it becomes slippery and vehicles get stuck in potholes, negativelyaffecting communities, tourism and the local economy. In the dry season, the road ismore stable and, depending on the intensity of the sun and the time of the day, it canbe rather dusty, causing all kinds of dust-related problems. As a result, for years many resi-dents, tourism entrepreneurs and politicians lobbied and protested in favour of pavingthis road. Around 2011 governmental plans were made to do so. However, proposalsand plans to pave this road were met with severe criticism, mainly from (internationallyfunded) conservationists. Many were against paving this road and suggested to locateit outside of Bwindi (Barr et al., 2015; Tabaruka, 2013). The protests were not unsuccessfuland until this day the Ruhija road remains unpaved. Yet, to our surprise by the end of 2018media attention covering the road controversy dwindled after parts of the road were soli-dified but not paved. This silencing of the debate sparked our attention. In this paper wewill try to deepen our understanding of the road controversies, the demise thereof andthe role of material agency in shaping tourism planning processes. By doing so, we will

2 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

also shed a different light on the seemly simple question whether this road should bepaved or not.

In this article, we combine insights from participant observation, document study andunstructured interviews (45 in total) with key stakeholders such as residents, local leaders,road authority officials, tourism officials and conservationists. Twelve of those interviewswere held in small groups ranging from four to eight people during various mobileresearch events such as drive- or walk-along sessions. These “data” were supplementedwith participant observations during meetings, conferences, workshops, social gather-ings, drive- and walk-along sessions, conducted by the first author in 2017, 2018 and2019. In addition, we analysed 104 published and unpublished documents such aslocal newspapers, tourist blogs, posts on social media (TripAdvisor, Facebook and inWhatsApp groups), government planning documents, policies and policy briefs.

Before returning to our analysis of how fixing a road could resolve a controversy aboutpaving it, we will introduce the theoretical framework that helped us to analyse anddeepen our understanding of the role of objects and material agency in socialcontroversies.

Theoretical framework

Actor Network Theory (ANT) has become widely known, especially within science andtechnology studies, for its focus on the role of non-humans in the making of the social(Michael, 2016). ANT grants that non-humans are actors too and should be taken into

Map 1. Location of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 3

account in our attempts to understand “society”. Both humans and non-humans aregranted agency: they act but they never act alone (Law & Mol, 2008; Mol, 2010). Theycannot be separated from the networks in which they are constituted (Latour, 2005).Since “the same” elements (bodies, materiality) can become part of different networks,within ANT reality is not seen as singular but multiple (Mol, 2002). Departing fromthese more general ANT insights we will now deepen our understanding of materialagency and object formation, which will be key to our analysis.

Material agency

Different schools of thought have conceptualised material agency. For example, Bennett(2004; 2010) emphasises that materials are not static entities, passively waiting for humanintervention, but are inherently active and capable of self-reorganisation. This view ofmaterial agency is shared by theorists such as Cetina et al. (2005, p. 12) who arguesthat “non-humans do not just mediate, but themselves propagate practices: practices,(…) comprise human and non-human activities”. In the words of Strengers and Maller(2012:, p. 756): “material objects, including technologies, infrastructures and artefactsbecome active participants in social practice”. Michael (2016), for example, draws onseveral ANT exemplar cases to demonstrate that it is the particular and contextual relationbetween humans and non-humans that produce, accelerate, disrupt or even hindercertain scientific practices such as experiments.

Object lessons

A disease, bush pump or piece of cheese is not a singular, stable object but a particularenactment in a particular time and place. So, when we analyse the multiplicity of theRuhija road or any other object, we do not speak of “different perspectives on a singleobject but the enactment of different objects in the different sets of relations and contextsof practice” (Law & Singleton, 2005, p. 342). Indeed, objects “probably have a more or lessstable shape in physical space—though the definition of that stable physical shape islikely to depend on relational and interactive work of one kind or another (and it mayalso be that “abstract objects” do not occupy Euclidean space)” (Law & Singleton, 2005,p. 337).

So, while within certain networks, certain objects might be seen as stable, immutable,clearly delineated, this is more the effect of rendering an object real and essentialising itwithin a certain network (Fuchs, 2009). In other words: while some objects might bethought of as singular and might look like the same thing in different contexts, theyare by definition different if the web of relations in which they are enacted aredifferent. Although some objects can be assumed to have more material stability thanothers, the ways objects hold themselves together in different contexts cannot beassumed a-priori, just like their agency, it is a relational effect.

Our focus

To understand the contested nature of the Ruhija road we analyse how the Ruhija road isenacted as different, overlapping and conflicting objects by a range of actors from the

4 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

tourism sector, conservation, members of local communities, road engineering and devel-opment planning. We start with the assumption that roads are the result of a particularenactment of materiality within a particular network into an object: a road. Materialityis always on the move and any discursive fixation renders something discursively staticthat in fact is dynamic, vibrant and multiple. How materiality will relate to and willaffect and be affected by a person, a community, or policies, can only beunderstood by observing the actual relations that are established between humansand non-humans.

A contested road

The unpaved Ruhija road is used and debated by locals, tourists, tourism organisations,conservationists, policymakers and politicians. We will now make explicit the differentways the road becomes real, and object of dispute for different state and non-stateactors. We will start by describing the relations and related experiences different usershave with and on the road. These relations and experiences not only illustrate themany ways in which the materiality of the road affects everyday life and practices, italso makes clear why many have argued in favour of paving the road. Then we willmove to the realm of politics and policies, and explain the most prominent yet unsuccess-ful attempts to pave the road. Finally, we will explain how conservationists argued againstand undermined the attempts to pave the road.

Living with the Ruhija road; stories of discontent

During the rainy season, when the Ruhija road gets in contact with the tyres of thevehicles, it often produces a film of water and gets slippery. In the dry season, thesame road disintegrates into dust particles when the wind blows over it or when avehicle passes. Many of the experiences of users of the road are related to these seasonalstages,

the drive takes at least 10 hours along often shocking dirt roads, while the dust your vehiclethrows up chokes the children on the verges. (Steve, 2014)

The road is described by tourists as a “rough road” providing an “African massage” (Tri-pAdvisor, 2014) experienced as:

Sharp jolt to the left, with a less-than-graceful smack into the overland truck window. Then abody-roll to the right as the torso tries to right itself in some beginner belly dancing move. Itis more often than not accompanied by a vertical push-up on the seat in front before the backnestles into the seat it originally rested on. (Wilson, 2015; see also Coyle, 2002)

The label “bone rattling road” is also used to refer to the roughness of commuting onthe road by car (Sher, 2006). As one tourist puts it: “the spine was (…) thrown out of whackand realigned a number of times” (Crabbe, 2011, p. 1). One of the staff from the Ministry ofTourism Wildlife and Antiquities (MTWA) explained that: “a guest does not pay more than2000 dollars for a gorilla viewing trip to break their backs on that bumpy road; they need acomfortable trip” (Interview with MTWA staff, 2017). The experiences with the Ruhija roadand other roads in Uganda made a tourist advise other potential travellers that they

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 5

should fly rather than drive to Bwindi because of the drive “along often shocking dirtroads, while the dust your vehicle throws up chokes the children” (TripAdvisor, 2014).

Drivers of tourist vehicles often have to prepare their trips with the road conditions inmind. For example, when it rains, drivers depart from the nearest town of Kabale at 5amand carry shovels along in case they have to deal with the muddy road. Sometimes theyhave to reduce speed to almost 10 km/h to go through the mud. If they get stuck, theyhave to mobilise the community, shovel out the mud, collect tree branches and stonesto improve traction before they can move. In the dry season, drivers drive withwindows closed to avoid irritation from dust. As a result, they pack plenty of water toquench the thirst produced by the heat from closed windows (interview with tourguide 3, 2018).

Many communities neighbouring the Bwindi forest, use the Ruhija road for livelihoodactivities such as commuting to health centres, farms and markets. They also trade thereby setting up roadside stalls and shops, and some have built their homes along the road.Tea farmers told us that whenever the road is slippery and their trucks get stuck on theroad, they sometimes have to walk long distances (about 11 kilometres) to the factory,carrying the large tea sacks on their heads. If they are lucky, they can walk to the less slip-pery sections of the road, where they can then load the tea onto trucks again (group inter-view with tea farmers, August, 2018).

During the dry months, dust from the road constantly finds its way into residents’houses, compounds, gardens and other spaces. As a result, they have to continuouslyclean their houses and wash their clothes. Also, people periodically pour water on thesurface of the road to contain the dust, though this only helps for a few minutes.During both seasons, many residents wake up early to make up for the extra timeneeded to drive slowly on a bumpy or slippery road.

From the interviews and meetings with residents and onsite observations, it becameclear the current Ruhija road is risky in two ways. Firstly, vehicles transporting patientsor women in labour cannot always get to the hospital fast enough, leading to extra com-plications or even death in some occasions. Secondly, sometimes the drivers fail to nego-tiate the sharp bends of the winding road while simultaneously dodging the protrudingrocks or potholes on the road surface. As a result, the vehicles sometimes veer off course,over turn or cause an accident.

The users we spoke to were very unsatisfied with the Ruhija road and none of themspoke fondly of it. Some residents even argued that “you cannot call the Ruhija road aroad, its rather an ekikorogyero”, which literally means a track for livestock. For years,many of these people expressed their wish for paving the road by means of protest orlobbied for it, and the Ruhija road was a constant point of discussion between politiciansand their electorate. These demands were further strengthened by local and internationalmedia reports about residents’ dissatisfaction with the state of the road (e.g. Mafabi, 2017;Red pepper, 2016; Tabaruka, 2013).

Attempts to pave the unpaved

Until 2011 the Ruhija road was hardly mentioned in official policy documents. In that year,comprehensive tourism statistics and surveys were published to emphasise the economicimportance of tourism to Uganda’s economy (Weiss & Masserli, 2012). Six priority roads for

6 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

tourism were identified, including the road to Bwindi (GSTA, 2011). The assessment reportindicated that the poor road infrastructure to key tourist sites was a major setback to thecountry’s tourism sector.

They specifically cited the World Economic Forum’s 2011 TTCI ranking of Uganda at119 (out of 139 countries) in quality of roads (Weiss & Masserli, 2012, p. 16) to justifythe need for paving these roads. Both the USAID-STAR paper and the tourism sectorassessment report argued that paving the tourist roads would promote tourism develop-ment and competitiveness by improving accessibility to the mountain gorillas (GSTA,2011; Weiss & Masserli, 2012). With the help of the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) and the Uganda Ministry of Finance, the paving of touristroads became a priority in order to improve infrastructure for sustainable tourism devel-opment in the Albertine region. Ruhija was of the roads earmarked to spur sustainabletourism development (GSTA, 2011) and the pavement of this road was included forfunding in the 2011/2012 budget of the Ugandan Ministry of Finance and EconomicDevelopment.

Between 2012 and 2015, all key tourism plans and policy documents included roads asa key issue and many of the perceived problems related to the sorry state of the road wereacknowledged. For example, UWA’s, 2013 strategic plan stated that “roads and touristinfrastructure (…) are inadequate, in a sorry state (…) hence giving the wrong insti-tutional image and demoralising staff” (UWA, 2013, p. 19). The Bwindi General Manage-ment Plan (GMP) indicated that, “all roads connecting Bwindi (…) are most of the timein a bad state (…) tourist vehicles often get stuck causing delays in their time-bound itin-eraries especially gorilla tracking” (UWA, 2014, p. 74).

Also Uganda’s revised tourism policy 2015, listed “poor road access to and between keytourists sites (…)” (MTWA, 2015, p. 13) as a key weakness of the tourism sector and aimedat “linking all key tourism sites with paved roads and all-weather marram roads whereappropriate” (MTWA, 2015, p. 18). In addition, the policy was striving to integratetourism development planning into physical infrastructure planning and developmentat central and local government levels. This influence was also evident in the revisedNational Development Plan II (NDPII) and the Vision 2040 (Chapter 4, section 90), thatemphasised improving tourism support infrastructure to efficiently facilitate thetourism industry. However, despite all these plans and debates, the Ruhija road hasneither been paved through the forest nor redirected outside the forest.

Conservationists resisting and undermining paving the Ruhija road

Conservationists also frequently use the Ruhija road when they commute to their offices,field stations to monitor gorillas and the forest, to conduct experiments, and collectsamples, as well as to guide visitors. Although they use the road and are also subjectto the poor road conditions, most of the conservationists are against paving the road.For them, as one of the biologists explained, the Ruhija road is “living matter that is con-stituted by microbes, mineral matter, water, and air”. Other conservationists added thatthe Ruhija road cannot be separated (by paving it) from the rest of the forest becauseit is part of the same ecosystem and plays a part in the feeding habits of the mountaingorillas, elephants and other animals, such as earthworms, snails and numerous otherinvertebrates, either burrowing into it or walking on it.

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 7

No wonder the conservationists protested against the plans to pave the Ruhija road.The Uganda Wildlife Authority, responsible for conserving Uganda’s biodiversity, andpartners commissioned a study questioning “the paving of the impenetrable”, andsuggested alternative routing for the same reasons and came up with an optionoutside the park (Barr et al., 2015). In a policy brief Barr et al. (2015) justified the needto maintain the current material conditions of the road. It not only argued that pavingthe Ruhija road would have adverse effects—such as losing the image of impenetrable-ness and a higher gorilla mortality—but also suggested alternatives. In line with this,Uganda Wildlife Authority’s GMP of Bwindi proposed to “lobby with central governmentto divert and tarmac the Ruhija-Ndego road through the community land (…) instead ofgoing through the park” (Uganda Wildlife Authority, 2014, p. 75). Such inclusions in policyreviews is not surprising given the efforts by various conservationists to influence policyand infrastructure development in support of biodiversity (Kim Bonine et al., 2016).

Moreover, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP), who offers sub-stantial financial support for the conservation of Bwindi, gave two options; withdrawalof their financial support if the road is paved; or mobilise more funds if the road is divertedoutside the forest (Interview with IGCP staff, 2017). The lobby of the conservationistsseemed to be successful as the reviewed 2014 Uganda Wildlife Policy explicitly statedthat “any road passing through a game park would only be built after a scientific studyhas cleared its viability and impact on the park” (Nsereko, 2014, p. 1).

Important to note here is that the conservationists were not unanimously againstpaving the road. For example, some UWA staff (2018) indicated that the unpaved roaddisrupted conservation practice by causing delays for the field staff (Uganda WildlifeAuthority, 1995; Uganda Wildlife Authority, 2014). Conservationists at the MTWAargued that focusing only on gorillas and the forests excluded humans, thus narrowingthe concept of conservation practice (Interviews with MTWA staff, 2017a; 2017b).

Conflicting realities

During our field work, we observed a road multiple, coenacted by “its”materiality. Duringnormal weather, the road appeared as a stable patch of compacted earth with a roughgravel surface on the most part of the road. On other parts of the road, the gravelsurface was washed away leaving gullies and potholes and several patched and baresoils. The roughness of this materiality was inescapably felt by all who drove or cycledon this road. During the dry season, upon contact with sun and wind, the same roadsurface disintegrated into dust particles. On rainy days, we also observed other configur-ations. The road surface was dotted with holes of varying sizes and shapes, with ants,earthworms, and other insects burrowing in and out, and others such as giant snailsmoving about on the road surface. In addition, the texture of the road during rainyseasons was also different. The surface felt soft to the feet, necessitating careful move-ment as it got slippery.

We noted that all these material realities were constantly present in the lives of thosethat either make use of the road or communicate about it in policy documents, protestsand media. ANT sensitised us not only to observe the agency of the Ruhija road, but alsohow agency relates to its multiplicity. Based on our road observations, and the ways inwhich people dealt with the Ruhija road and communicated about it, we discerned a

8 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

couple of different roads: a tourist road, an invisible road, an ecological road, a “non” road,a technical road and a political road and it is the difference between some of these enact-ments that sparked the controversy. In this paper we focus on the three versions of theRuhija road—the tourist road, the non-road and the ecological road—that stood outand dominated all discussions about the road.

The tourist road

The first road we observed is the tourist road that winds through the mountainous land-scape of Southwestern Uganda, and promises an encounter with mountain gorillas. Thisroad entangled with the tourist vehicles, driver’s skills to manoeuvre the bends, thetourist’ bodies, and weather to enable or hinder tourist movement to Bwindi. This roadworked in relation with weather to enable tourists’ movements, and thus enhancedtheir itineraries, especially during the moderate weather conditions. However, duringthe heavy rains, the same road worked with the vehicle tyres, to hinder or slowmovementthereby disrupting the tourist’s itineraries. In one case, the winding road made it difficultfor the driver guide to negotiate the bends leading to an accident. The sight of an over-turned 4 × 4 vehicle, the spilled fuel mixed with blood on the dirt road surface, and piecesof metal not only made apparent the agency of the road in terms of hindering tourists’mobility and disrupting itineraries; but also revealed how risky the roads could be.

This road was enacted in several tourism-related activities such as planning for tourisminfrastructure development, budgeting processes, tour driving, and assessment surveysand reporting. In these activities, the Ruhija road is a road that enables transporting tour-ists to and from gorilla tracking in Bwindi, which is Uganda’s most important source oftourism revenue. Partly this road is constituted by ongoing calculations of the economicvalue of the road based on revenue earned through tourism and the trade of goods suchas tea (interview with UNRA staff, 2017; interview with local leader 1 & 2, 2018). Paving thetourist road is seen as an investment in Uganda’s tourism industry, not paving it wouldimply prolonging the many problems tourism entrepreneurs and tourists experience inusing the road in its current state.

The non-road

The non-road was observed to be non-motorable because of its slipperiness and roughsurface. The residents often encountered this road as a mere “semblance of road, but actu-ally, (…) it is ekikorogyero” (interview with community leader 1, 2017). “Ekikorogyero” refersto the paths normally used by cattle as they are herded to the fields. We name this secondenactment of the Ruhija road: the non-road. Paving this version of the road would turn theekikorogyero into an actual road. This road included the painful absence of not beingpaved. At stake here is not the country’s economy, or tourism in general, but the livesand livelihoods of many communities who depend on the road in one way or another.

The ecological road

The ecological road was observed in terms of the variety of life that came forth from theroad surface, mainly on rainy days. Some people we talked to further explained that the

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 9

ecological road is living matter—a composite of “microbes, mineral matter, water and air”(interview with a biologist, 2017). Others added that the road in its unpaved current shapefurther ensures survival of other animal life, such as gorillas who also constantly cross theroad as they go about their daily lives. They clarified that by “forcing” motorists to slowdown due to the rough surface, the road is safe for gorillas and other animals becauseit reduces the risk of road kills from speeding vehicles (interview with UWA staff 2,2018; interview with IGCP staff 1, 2017).

However, much as the ecological road seemed to support life, there were concerns thatthis road also disrupts ecological life processes. By dissecting the park at the Kitahuriracorridor the road created a great difference between the northern and southern blocksof the forest (Butynski, 1984). As a result, most ecologists argued that paving this roadwould separate it from the rest of the forest and affect the ecosystem in a negativeway, since this road is part of the same ecosystem (interview with IGCP staff 1 & 2; 2017).

Consensus materiality

Following Mol’s (2002) argument about the body multiple, the multiple realities of theRuhija road cannot be dismissed as perspectives from different people; they are realitiesin their own right. Yet, at the same time, these realities are not exclusive; they also overlapin particular ways. While paving would reduce the tourist travel time and discomfort whiletravelling on the Ruhija road (NRM Media, 2016) and improve “the quality of human life”on and next to the road for many, the ecological road as it is now recognised by conser-vationists, would be destroyed. The other way around: doing nothing would “conserve”the ecological road, but would prolong its disruptive agency for many. An end to this con-troversy is therefore hard to imagine, yet it was reached.

In November 2015, a presidential candidate from the most popular opposition partywas reported to have spent about 40 minutes helping to push a lorry that was stuckon the Ruhija road (Tumushabe & Rumanzi, 2015). This interaction with the road, inrelation to his scheduled rally “prompted him to “immediately” refocus his message ofthe day to condemning the incumbent on poor road infrastructure” (Monitor team,2015, p. 22). A few days after media reports on the materiality of the Ruhija road, theExecutive Director of the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) received a directivefrom H.E. the President to visit Bwindi and the entire Kanungu area to assess the situation(Monitor team, 2015). Upon receiving this directive, UNRA staff visited the area with ateam of other politicians from the national, district and local level representatives (inter-view with local leader 2, 2017). During this visit the UNRA director also got stuck in themud.

We all got stuck at Mpungu for more than three hours together with the UNRA director andher Kampala team. It was getting dark with no hope of pulling through (…) (interview withpolitical leader, 2017)

This prompted the UNRA to immediately dispatch equipment, and engineers to “fix”the muddy section of the road by improving traction without paving (Interview withRoads Authority staff 1, 2018). The road was fixed by first excavating out all the existinginferior material (chalky soil); then filling the excavation with a layer of rock fill [bigstones]. And lastly, adding gravel, and compacting the surface to improve traction. This

10 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

is because rocks and gravel do not easily get slippery after heavy rains (Interview withUNRA field staff 2, 2018). After the intervention, vehicles no longer got stuck at theMpungu spot on the Ruhija road. Consequently, the frequency of articles in local printmedia and social media dropped from weekly reports around November and December2015 to none in the same period of 2016.

Here the object lessons already learned by other ANT scholars can help us to under-stand why the conflict ended (at least for now). Fixing certain parts of the road made adifference in each of the three road realities. Although not paved, the tourist road aswell as the non-road improved. For the conservationist the improvements still matchedwith their idea of an ecological road. While paving would harm the road, this way offixing kept the ecological road intact. The material changes kept the road alive as amutable mobile, comparable to the bush pump as described by Annemarie Mol:

This object is best understood as a mutable mobile. It is mutable in a variety of ways and for avariety of reasons. For instance, over time (and indeed geographical location) its physicalshape changes, as do its component parts. This is because, when a pump breaks, villagerstend to replace its components with whatever happens to be at hand: bits of old tyres, con-venient tree branches […] ‘The pump’ keeps going, but the work that is keeping it going islargely unremarked, and (very important in the present context) that work has the effect ofreconfiguring the relations that keep the pump going. (Law & Singleton, 2005, p. 338)

In maintaining the adaptive capacity of the road’s materiality and not solidifying it in analmost irreversible way (by paving it) tamed its agency in all networks, but saved its pro-ductive role in that of the conservationists.

Conclusion

In many studies, transport infrastructure is taken for granted as a fixed object that facili-tates travel to and from particular regions, places or tourist destinations or is seen as apassive object of controversies, discussions, policies and plans (Beeco et al., 2013; Boers& Cottrell, 2007; Donázar et al., 2018; Gardner, 2017). In this article, we moved awayfrom this perspective and departed from theoretical and conceptual notions fromActor-network Theory on material agency.

We first studied the multiple ways in which the Ruhija road in Bwindi (Uganda) isenacted and got objectified by different stakeholders. The Ruhija road is singular inname only. The “same” materiality—a road—was enacted by different human actorsaffected by the materiality into different, sometimes overlapping and sometimes contra-dicting, objects. Matter matters, yet it matters differently depending on the relation inwhich it is enacted.

Second and related, we showed how different objectifications of the Ruhija road notonly led to enduring conflicts, but also contributed to the postponement of theimplementation of the proposed plans to pave the road. We specifically focussed onthe role of material agency in the constitution of these conflicting differences andrelated communications of discontent. This discontent was partly embedded in theway the materiality is enacted into a specific object. Simply put: the normative attitudestowards the road were part of the enactment of the road. Those who enacted the materialas an ekikorogyero, or a non-road only, were clearly dissatisfied with the state it was in,

TOURISM PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 11

while others, such as many of the conservationists we interviewed, were happy with theunpaved road. There is a clear relation between the way the road is enacted as a road ornon-road and the way it is seen as a problem or not. For most actors involved and in mostmedia discourses, the road was seen as a problem, as something that needed to bechanged into a “real” road by paving. Only for some conservationists, for whom theroad was “living matter”, keeping the road as it was, was more important than the disad-vantages of an unpaved road.

Third, we argued that this conflict was almost accidently resolved by improving trac-tion without paving the road. The ability of the road to disrupt the movement of poli-ticians led to the initial prompt action, which resulted in fixing some of the mostproblematic parts of the road, which made the road less dangerous and stopped theroad from reminding people about its dangerous existence. As a result, the conflict gotpacified. This material pacification is the result of an undeliberate interference thatimproved all road realities and did not undermine or was at odds with anyone of them.

In terms of theoretical contributions, our observations helped us to rethink and recon-ceptualise a particular form of non-human agency: material agency. A kind of agency thattranscends enabling the movement of tourists (Beeco et al., 2013; Denstadli & Jacobsen,2011) or attracting tourists (Lew, 1991); to an agency that, among others, allows multipleobservations, blocks, renders possible, and influences (Latour, 2005) plans, policies andpractices. We showed how materiality is not only vibrant but also how this vibrancy isalways relational, and can only be understood when one takes into account thecontext in which materiality is objectified and co-shapes practices and policies.

Although we were obviously not able to interview the road, our observations, inter-views and document analysis made it clear that the agency of the road in our case isundisputed. Its disruptive forces in relation to some (e.g. tourists and local communities)and its productive forces in relation to others (e.g. wildlife) made this clear. The road wasopened up by humans and technologies and in turn, the road disrupted technicians, poli-ticians, tourists, residents and other people’s movements. In terms of agency, the Ruhijaexample clearly demonstrates Michael’s (2016, p. 69) argument that “the agency of non-humans enables the agency of humans which enables the agency of non-humans and soon”. In addition, the ability of the road to disintegrate into dustiness and slipperiness; toget vehicles stuck, placed the road on district and national planning and policy agendas.Hence, we argue that the process of planning and making policies on tourism infrastruc-ture development was co-produced by the Ruhija road, tourism planners and policymakers, and the technologies involved, among others. Therefore, inspired by Jepsonet al. (2011) we discern the road as a conservation and tourism actor in this respect.

Our analysis also revealed that materiality itself is indifferent to particular objectifica-tions (as a road, not a road, living matter). Whether or not the materiality is enacted asa road or a non-road, all actors involved were and are dealing with the limitations itimposes on their commutes. Simply put: the car of the ecologist who believes that theroad is part of nature gets just as stuck as the car of the resident who believes theroad is not actually a road. So how materiality is observed as an object does not alwaysnecessarily relate to its agency. Sometimes, it relates to particular contexts andpeople’s opinions making it more complicated than a matter of paving or not paving.Finally, by providing detailed examples of the situational agency of materiality, wehope we contributed to a body of literature that goes beyond illustrating or proving

12 C. AMPUMUZA AND M. DUINEVELD

that matter matters in social sciences, humanities and tourism studies, but that deepensour insight into how it matters in a non-singular world where humans and non-humansrelate in vibrant and often surprising ways, infinitely.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Edu-cation: [Grant Number PhD.16/0019].

ORCID

René van der Duim http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4010-2530

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